Talk:Oil industry

Figures on oil production

I've read a few articles from the peak oil people talking a lot about things that they have no clue about or at least aren't admitting truthfully. So I thought that I'd take advantage of this space to throw in a few figures about oil production.

Let's start by using Shell's Gulf of Mexico (GOM) project Ursa. Daily oil production capacity for Ursa is 150,000 bopd. Meaning that they expect peak oil production to be near that amount. Total oil reserves are 400 mmboe. Meaning they expect to produce 400 million barrels of oil equivalent (oil + gas) over the life of the project. The development cost of this project is $1,450,000,000 in USD. Producing 150,000 bopd @ $35/barrel (=$5,250,000 per day) for 276 days (less than a year) will pay the developmental costs for this project. Expected life of this project at peak production of 150,000 bopd = 2667 days/362 = 7.36 years. Now there are other considerations such as administration and maintenance costs but you get the idea. These people aren't going broke and they're not having the difficulties that some would have you believe. [1]

What it appears that they're doing is running around the world sucking up every lease they can get their hands on, producing the most lucrative leases and sitting on the rest while witholding production [2] to arm twist nations into giving up lucrative concessions. [3][4] Also, don't get too upset when reviewing their past years earnings losses. You have to sell a lot of oil below cost to drive your competitors out of business. I can't imagine anyone forcing these oligopolies to sell oil for less than cost plus a reasonable profit.